What we are really doing here

Okay, I've put so much about what we are "seeing" here that it's time to add what we're "doing" here.

This first picture is a building just south of the Visitors Center at the Hill Cumorah (VCHC).   It's called the Administration Building or Admin Building for short.  I love the fall colors surrounding the building.

This building is the center/brain of the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  It's where it all gets put together.  It' full of costumes, wigs, and all sorts of equipment and management "stuff" for the pageant.  Elder Poulson and I have been assigned to take an inventory of the Administration Building.  We don't need to inventory the items IN the building, but we are to inventory the building itself.  FUN, and I'm glad I have Elder Poulson to help me.  We count and measure and document the walls, flooring, mill work, lights, etc. everything that is part of the actual building.  I'm learning a lot. 

I took the second picture on our way to fix a rope on the door of the thrashing barn.  There is a large barn that was moved onto the Smith Farm from the John Young Farm (John was Brigham's father).  They took the barn apart and moved it here and put it back together again.  It's the original Young thrashing barn.  It has large barn doors on each end of the barn and they close the doors every evening at closing time.  There are large hemp ropes to pull the doors closed and they wear out frequently.  Elder Poulson was assigned to replace the frayed ropes and I went with him. 

These pictures were taken while Elder Poulson and I worked at the Welcome Center where the tours start for the Smith Farm and the Sacred Grove.  We had the assignment to calk the expansion joints in the sidewalk in front of the Welcome Center.  I wasn't too much help but I played "go-fer" and helped move benches and set up barricades to keep visitors from stepping in the goop that filled the cracks.  I didn't take pictures of the job, but I did snap some pictures of the fall colors at the entrance to the Smith Farm.

To summarize and to answer the questions about "what do you do as FM missionaries", I'll list some of our assignments here.

We've painted the pole barn doors....We've planted vinca on "The Hill"....We've fixed broken locks on a few doors (did I mention that we both have master keys that will get us into ANY door owned by the Church here in the Finger Lakes area?)....Bill has done "cold patch" work on pot holes in the blacktop on the road to Moroni....and he just finished "winterizing" all (and there are a lot) of the toilets in the pageant bathrooms.  That involved taking the toilets all apart to get every drop of water out and replacing it with anti-freeze....He has replaced lights in the parking lot of the church in Fairport and the Palmyra Temple....He is in the process of cleaning and organizing one of the work stations used for woodworking....If I can't find him, he's usually in the Pole Barn helping the auto mechanic get the golf carts (lots of those too) ready to store for the winter and the snow blowers (a dozen +) ready to work in the winter.  At one time or another, I've cleaned every sacred site except the Whitmer Farm.  That entails cleaning the log cabin, the frame home and Welcome Center and the Hill Comorah Visitors Center and the Grandin Building.  Bill helps if he's available and right now he's helping me, when he can,with the Christmas lights for the Smith Farm.  I've worked 2 full days and he has helped about half that time.  It involves testing every string of 100 lights to be sure they are working.  About half of them are NOT working and require trouble shooting to get them going.  We have about half of them done, I think.  There are 110 working strings with that many more to trouble shoot.  I'm learning patience and Bill is teaching me patience.

We love it here.  We love our mission and we love the work we do.  It is a spiritual work we are doing in a sacred place.  We are so blessed. 

Moses 6:63

• And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.